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Arriver à se réveiller

SKU ARRI-001
Price

€680.00

A rare first edition of Arriver à se réveiller, written by Henri Michaux in the tremulous post-war years. The text unfolds as an inward journey toward lucidity, where sleep and waking mirror each other. Printed and published by Pierre Bettencourt in his own workshop, the edition’s small run preserves the work’s intimacy. The title-page vignette, a linocut by Bettencourt, sets a spare, rhythmic visual key that amplifies Michaux’s vigilant, vulnerable tone. This copy is handsomely bound in brown morocco with balsa boards by Miguet, a tactile nod to lightness under tension. For bibliophiles, it is an exemplary union of poetry, craft, and experiment. The volume embodies the independence of the post-war small press and Michaux’s radical sensitivity.

Quantity

Arriver à se réveiller
1947 | Bettencourt
A precise, rare consonance between Michaux’s spare acuity and Bettencourt’s tactile idiom. Finely bound by Miguet, this copy is a small triumph of form and focus. An essential miniature for the lover of post-war small presses.

A rare first edition of Arriver à se réveiller, written by Henri Michaux in the tremulous post-war years. The text unfolds as an inward journey toward lucidity, where sleep and waking mirror each other. Printed and published by Pierre Bettencourt in his own workshop, the edition’s small run preserves the work’s intimacy. The title-page vignette, a linocut by Bettencourt, sets a spare, rhythmic visual key that amplifies Michaux’s vigilant, vulnerable tone. This copy is handsomely bound in brown morocco with balsa boards by Miguet, a tactile nod to lightness under tension. For bibliophiles, it is an exemplary union of poetry, craft, and experiment. The volume embodies the independence of the post-war small press and Michaux’s radical sensitivity.

€680
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 160 copies; with title-page vignette/linocut by Pierre Bettencourt.
Print Run
160
Copy Number
15
Paper
vélin d’Arches
Inscription
No inscription
1
Edition Particulars:
We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests. Each message is treated with discretion and respect. We welcome private inquiries, collaborations with institutions, and acquisition requests.
1
Print Run:
Condition Report:
1
Copy Number:
Condition Report:
1
Paper:
Condition Report:
1
Signed:
Condition Report:

Product DETAIL

A sequence of short prose-poems and fragments probes the threshold between sleep and wakefulness, between dream residue and lucid poise. Michaux writes elliptically and with pulse: sentences that sharpen, then dissolve. Motifs of moving, rising, striking, and resuming recur as rituals of awareness. Narrative is sparse, yet cadence and inner motion are rich. The tone is both ascetic and restless, as if each word taught the body to wake again. The result is a concentrated miniature of his major concerns: autonomy, resistance, attention.

Une aventure méthodique
Reverdy, Pierre · Braque, Georges
Une aventure méthodique

*Une aventure méthodique* brings together Pierre Reverdy’s concentrated poetic prose and Georges Braque’s austere visual language. It belongs among the major post-war French livres d’artiste, where text, lithography and typography meet as equal forces. Braque contributed 27 original lithographs, supplemented by colour reproductions after his paintings, giving the volume both intimacy and monumentality. Printed by Mourlot, the celebrated Paris lithographic workshop, the book has exceptional technical refinement. This copy, on vélin d’Arches and signed by both author and artist, preserves a rare encounter between modern poetry and pictorial invention.

Ill Book
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La guerre et la paix
Roy, Claude · Picasso, Pablo
La guerre et la paix

*La guerre et la paix*, published in 1954, is a monumental overview of Pablo Picasso's work for the Vallauris chapel, accompanied by Claude Roy's text. This edition by Cercle d’Art forms an essential synthesis of Picasso’s post-war humanism and his resistance to the horrors of conflict. The book contains, alongside numerous reproductions, original lithographs that expose the dynamics of his artistic process. For the bibliophile, this work is a crucial testimony to the dialogue between word and image in the early 1950s.

Ill Book
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Hélène chez Archimède
Suarès, André
Hélène chez Archimède

Hélène chez Archimède is a remarkable example of the collaboration between a poet and a visual artist, in this case the French author André Suarès and the legendary Spanish master Pablo Picasso. The edition, illustrated with wood engravings, reveals the complex interplay between word and image that culminated in the production of illustrated books in the mid-20th century. This work, originally a project by the famous art dealer Ambroise Vollard, shows the enduring relevance of classical themes, here the myth of Helen, in a modernist context. Thanks to its careful execution and the exclusivity of its print run, Hélène chez Archimède is not only a literary work but also an art object, a testament to the artisanal perfection sought by the Nouveau Cercle parisien du Livre. It represents a significant moment in the history of the modern illustrated book, where the line between illustration and autonomous art blurs. The additions to this copy, such as a menu and an announcement leaflet, enrich its bibliographic and historical value and offer a rare glimpse into its publication context.

Ill Book
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Sombre printemps. Traduit de l’allemand par Ruth Henry et Robert Valançay.
Zürn, Unica · Bellmer, Hans
Sombre printemps. Traduit de l’allemand par Ruth Henry et Robert Valançay.

This large and sumptuous edition of Sombre printemps brings together one of Unica Zürn’s most haunting texts and an original burin frontispiece by Hans Bellmer. Issued by Pierre Belfond as the French translation of Dunkler Frühling, it appeared when Zürn’s name had become inseparable from Bellmer’s. That proximity is not merely biographical here; it shapes the entire aura of the book, in which text and image seem to emerge from the same disturbed inner world. The deluxe issue, printed on vélin d’Arches and accompanied by an additional proof on japon nacré, gives the volume a distinctly bibliophilic status. Bellmer’s signed frontispiece does not simply decorate the text, but stands as a visual counterpoint to Zürn’s claustrophobic prose. The publication is all the more poignant for having followed so closely upon Zürn’s death, as though the book became both tribute and posthumous memorial. Within the Cahiers du Regard, it ranks among the most charged and desirable collaborations. For the collector, this copy unites literary intensity, surrealist resonance, and exceptional material refinement.

Ill Book
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Studies & Dossiers
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The ‘destroyed’ copies of La lampe dans l’horloge

Books thrive on rumours. This is the story of a first issue Breton ‘made disappear’—and the copies that persisted.

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